Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to making and processing of membranes, and other materials and substrates with modified surfaces and/or switchable oleophilicity and oleophobicity in aqueous media. Also provided is the making and processing of such surface-modified membranes and other surface-modified substrates.
Description of Related Art
Over millions of years of evolution, many marine animals such as fish have developed skins capable of protecting them from marine fouling, which are accomplished by combining micro- and nanoscaled hierarchical structures and suitable surface chemistry. Meanwhile it has been also revealed that fish can survive in oil-polluted water owing to their oleophobic scales. Oil wettability is of great importance for materials used in aqueous or non-aqueous media, because of its application in fields such as droplet manipulation in microfluidics, fabrication of antifouling filtration membranes, and oil/water separation. In such way, an oil-water-solid system instead of the air-water-solid system becomes the main concern.
Therefore, the design and preparation of surfaces with controllable oil wettability is highly desirable, particularly those that exhibit switchable oleophobicity in aqueous media.